Junk Mail

I’m in junk mail hell and so is my overloaded blue bin ... I can barely move it for the weight of the unsolicited mail acquired in the last fortnight alone. Extrapolate that over a year and we are talking mega tonnes of unwanted wastepaper.

It all started when I bought a few bits ‘n’ pieces over the phone. In that goody bag was a catalogue for another household company. Then hot-on-the-heels of that delivery another catalogue from a completely different company arrived through the letter box. I hadn’t requested the catalogues but I am what I am and I couldn’t resist having a leaf through them and ... You guessed it. I bought a couple of bits ‘n’ bobs and then more catalogues from other companies arrived and even when I didn’t purchase anything they kept coming and coming and ...

Wanted a rocket booster for a wee space shuttle I’m building in the potting shed and none of the catalogue peeps stocked one, so I went on the Internet. Unfortunately there are many things us second class citizen peeps are not allowed to have delivered to Northern Ireland, and that sucks, but each site has a link to another one and I found all sorts of unusual stuff and don’t you know it ... I got the plastic out and ordered books by Dean Koontz, seeds for the Poly-Tunnel, new boots, joint aid for the Rock and lotions ‘n’ potions for Biker Babe and me. The husband gets to wait in for the deliveries so he didn’t want anything.

Anyway ... next thing I know the wee ‘puter is all clogged up and crying like baby with snot coming out in streams (or more like adult with verbal diarrhoea doing somersaults). All I did was buy a couple of things online and then these companies are inundating me with Spam. So there I am blocking and bouncing stuff up and down and cursor-ing like trouper when I could be on Facebook talking to my peeps. 

Decided to register myself on the ITV web site ‘cause I love Loose Women and next thing the ‘puter is downloading 28 emails in 46 seconds from surveying marketing peeps, driving schools, accident help lines, injury claims lawyers, bingo geeks, and the latest offers from every company I ever bought a sock from and all their subsidiary stores.    

You are the author of your own misfortune I hear you say. But wait a MO. I made a choice to buy goods from certain companies but I did not realise they would sell me out. It seems that in the extremely small print companies do advise us that they store our information for marketing purposes and “share” it with carefully selected third parties (i.e. Themselves in all their sneaky marketing guises). Those companies in turn share our information and purchasing preferences with any other marketing company willing to pay top dollar for it. Then they sell it on to more companies who send us more junk mail and the bin men get a hernia and the cost of marketing is added to the price of the product and another rain forest bites the dust ...